Excerpt: In Darkened Dreams

The darkness was all around him, within him. It embraced him first; feeling somewhat familiar only to then begin to push and pull at him, closing in on him. Darkness had never been a stranger to him, not a friend either, but a constant in his life, but not here. Here his world was bright and vivid and full of light and clarity. It was different now though, the darkness seemed to take on a personality of its own, it was no longer merely a neutral, ever present observer. It had such a presence, such a force that he could feel it encroaching on his mind. In fact he could hardly detect any sense of himself anymore. The darkness seeped in and his thoughts began to bleed out and blend with it until they faded away and he was left with nothing. He was nothing anymore, just part of the darkness.
A loud, harsh pitch wrenched him from one dark world into another, where he lay, writhing in his bed, drenched with sweat with his mouth open and his vocal chords straining to produce a sound he did not know he was capable of. The scream came from deep within his body, filled with a fear so insurmountable and overwhelming that he did not know what to make of it. Once the sound left his lips, he was able to come back to himself, but in the waking world the dream made no more sense to him than when he had been within it moments before. His dreams were usually so clear, but lately they had been more like fragments, scenes that did not fit together and adding this one to the puzzle did not make it anymore coherent. He had never experienced anything quite like this one. Whether his dreams were about him or not, he was always present at least in mind if not in body, but this one was so strange, so ominous. It twisted his insides into a nervous knot that he could not undo.